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Monkey Business and Freakonomics

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the cashing-out-in-banana-chips dept.

marct22 writes "Stephen J Dubner, co-writer of 'Freakonomics' said there will be a second Freakonomics book. One of the items that will be covered is capuchin monkeys' use of washers as money, buying sweets, budgeting for favored treats over lesser treats. He mentioned that one of the experiments had similar outcomes as a study of day traders. And lastly, he watched capuchin prostitution!"

5 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. There's only been half a book so far.. by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you're thinking of buying Freakonomics, don't bother. Half the book is "letters from our website".

    It's one of those books you buy at the airport before a long trip only to discover that it only takes half the trip to read it.

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    1. Re:There's only been half a book so far.. by 26199 · · Score: 5, Informative

      It was short. But also one of the most interesting short books I've read.

      So I hereby counter your unrecommendation ;)

    2. Re:There's only been half a book so far.. by Erwos · · Score: 3, Informative

      Speaking as someone who actually did econometrics and hard math/statistics economics in school, I could not agree more with this critique of Freakonomics. It is an entertaining read, to be sure, but he's omitted a lot of the data to support his conclusions, making it more of a "just believe me" book than an actual primer to non-traditional economics.

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  2. Monkey business news, only 2 years old by Nevyn · · Score: 3, Informative

    One of the items that will be covered is capuchin monkeys' use of washers as money, buying sweets, budgeting for favored treats over lesser treats. He mentioned that one of the experiments had similar outcomes as a study of day traders. And lastly, he watched capuchin prostitution!

    The NY Times article on that study, from 2005, can be found here.

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  3. Re:they are like us by porcupine8 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Koko the signing gorilla has been pretty well debunked. Actual fluent speakers of ASL couldn't understand a word she was "saying," and outside evaluators could never manage to verify the huge vocabulary that Penny Patterson claimed she had, only a much more limited one (I think something like 100-150 words instead of 1000+). Chimps and gorillas *can* learn to use various symbols as a vocabulary, but they cannot understand grammar. To them, "me eat banana" and "banana eat me" and "me me banana eat banana me" all mean the same thing.

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